Super Tuesday: Live Coverage

Voters in ten states have had their opportunity to weigh in on the Republican Presidential race today, and now the results will start coming in. We’ll have live coverage of the news from Super Tuesday in this post throughout the night, starting when the first polls close in three states at 7 P.M. E.T., so make sure to keep coming back and refreshing. And for more, check out The Political Scene, our hub for campaign coverage, including handy maps that break down the Super Tuesday landscape, and some classic New Yorker political cartoons.

1:35 A.M. E.T.: Time for me to sign off for the night. If you missed any of our coverage, be sure to read down through the rest of this post, and keep checking News Desk throughout the day Wednesday.

12:53 A.M. E.T.: A little more about Santorum’s problems going forward—though he fought Romney to a near-draw in Ohio, he’s well behind in the delegate count. According to N.B.C.’s Chuck Todd, his network has Romney winning at least thirty-eight of Ohio’s sixty-six delegates.

12:45 A.M. E.T.: Another interesting call from the A.P.: Samuel Wurzelbacher—yes, Joe the Plumber—will represent the Republican Party in the race for Ohio’s ninth district.

12:32 A.M. E.T.: C.N.N. and N.B.C. have joined the A.P. in calling Ohio for Romney.

12:29 A.M. E.T.: It’s all over: the A.P. just called Ohio for Romney. What could have been a big night for Santorum ends on a disappointing note, though his wins in Oklahoma and Tennessee mean he’s at least still alive.

12:10 A.M. E.T.: Still no call on the Presidential primary in Ohio, but we do know results from a few interesting Congressional races. Representative Jean Schmidt, a controversial Republican, has lost her primary. So has Mary Jo Kilroy, a former congresswoman who was hoping to return to the House. And Dennis Kucinich, too, has lost, to another Democratic incumbent, Marcy Kaptur. Kucinich didn’t just lose—he got killed. With 83.5 per cent of precincts reporting, Kucinich trails Kaptur by twenty-four percentage points. Joe the Plumber is running in the Republican primary in Kaptur’s district; right now, it looks like he’ll get the chance to face her in the fall.

12:00 A.M. E.T.: Voting in Alaska, the last of ten states that held contests on Tuesday, is over. No calls there yet.

11:42 P.M. E.T.: The Washington Post is getting a lot of flack for (inaccurately) tweeting that C.N.N. had called Ohio for Romney. If only.

11:17 P.M. E.T.: C.N.N.’s now suggesting that it might not be able to call Ohio tonight either. But John King says he thinks it’s basically impossible for Santorum, who currently trails Romney by about three thousand votes, to come from behind. Take that however you want to.

Separately, on Twitter, Chuck Todd says N.B.C. is calling the Idaho caucuses for Romney as well, and that “he’ll win big enough to garner all 32 delegates.” Again, at a certain point, this becomes a delegate game, and these small prizes can add up very quickly.

10:58 P.M. E.T.: Fox News has projected Romney as the winner of the Idaho caucuses; Paul and Santorum are vying for second place.

10:52 P.M. E.T.: NBC’s Domenico Montanaro just tweeted that his colleague Chuck Todd says their network will not call Ohio tonight. We’ll keep watching to see if other networks make a call, but that’s a sign of just how close this is getting.

10:41 P.M. E.T.: Still no winner in Ohio’s Republican primary. Actually, as time goes on and more votes are counted, the race between Romney and Santorum there is getting tighter. Here’s the thing to remember, though: Even if he wins the state, Santorum’s campaign failed in a major way in Ohio when it failed to qualify him to win a significant number of its delegates. Santorum can win the popular vote, but Romney will still take the majority of the delegates.

To understand the impact of mistakes like that, think about it this way: in 2008, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was good at racking up wins. But it hadn’t really figured out a good delegate strategy. And in a long race, that was ultimately a fatal error. It’s not the popular vote that matters at the Republican National Convention this summer, it’s not the number of states won, it’s the number of delegates. And key figures in the G.O.P., including donors, understand that. Even if Santorum keeps racking up wins like the ones he got tonight, at a certain point the math may begin to look impossible for him. When that happens, the pressure on him to bow out will be intense.

10:14 P.M. E.T.: One note on what I wrote earlier about Dennis Kucinich’s primary: the Ohio secretary of state’s Web site appears to be a bit behind. And according to the A.P., with just about fifty per cent of precincts having reported, Kucinich is almost nine percentage points behind Marcy Kaptur.

10:09 P.M. E.T.: CNN just called the caucuses in North Dakota for Santorum. Not a big prize for him, but it does matter for a couple reasons. First of all, every delegate matters, especially because Santorum gave up his chance at delegates in Virginia altogether, and botched an opportunity to win some of Ohio’s delegates. Second, North Dakota was one of the states where Ron Paul was hoping to get a win, but his streak of losses continues.

10:01 P.M. E.T.: We are, yes, still waiting on the results from Ohio, where the distance between Romney and Santorum remains very close. There’s one other race I’m watching there: Representative Dennis Kucinich, the liberal hero, was redistricted out of his seat this year, and into the district held by a fellow Democrat, Marcy Kaptur. They faced each other in a primary today; right now, Kucinich is ahead by about eight percentage points, or three thousand votes, but it could still go either way.

9:51 P.M. E.T.: Something to watch as Romney keeps speaking: when he appears in other states, he tends to distance himself from Massachusetts, and from his record there, as both are too liberal for the taste of many Republican primary voters. But this is a man who’s known for unsubtly tailoring his message to his audience—what will he say when he’s actually in Massachusetts?

9:48 P.M. E.T.: While “congratulating” his rivals on their performances today, Romney says, “Thanks, you guys, nice races.” Which is not really how you congratulate someone. Apparently it’s how Romney does it, though.

9:42 P.M. E.T.: Romney, joined by his wife and some other family members, has just taken the stage in Boston. A moment before he spoke, former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino was on Fox News, noting that both Santorum and Gingrich had gone on for entirely too long tonight. (She won’t say it, but I will: their speeches were generally not very good, and the length didn’t help.) The irony of that: during Gingrich’s speech, the familiar Republican attack on Obama, that he uses a teleprompter when he speaks, came up once again. It’s a silly thing to say generally, especially because one thing a teleprompter really helps with is keeping politicians from rambling on and on.

9:19 P.M. E.T.: Though the outcome is still unknown—it’s legitimately too close to call, and really could go either way at this point—Rick Santorum has started speaking to supporters in the state. Which is good politics: at this point, he’s slightly ahead in the count there, and he’s won in Oklahoma and Tennessee. So why not make a victory speech while you still can? Plus, voters at home are still watching on T.V. If you wait until Ohio’s called, you risk your speech coming on after a significant number of people have already gone to bed.

9:00 P.M. E.T.: Andrew Prokop went to Lynchburg, Virginia, home of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, to see how voting was going with Santorum and Gingrich off the ballot. He filed a fantastic report; read it here.

Also, CNN just called Oklahoma for Santorum—Fox News had said the same thing long ago. We’re still waiting on Ohio.

8:54 P.M. E.T.: Newt accidentally made a good point in his speech just now. Romney’s strategy in the primaries has basically been to use his financial advantage to drown his opponents in negative advertising. He can’t use that same strategy against President Obama, whose campaign has some serious fundraising chops of its own. Of course, Newt said that in the course of arguing that he’s the perfect Republican nominee because he could out-debate Obama, but still: it was a good point.

8:49 P.M. E.T.: Newt is giving his Election Night speech right now. It’s a bit much to call it a victory speech, because he has, after all, won just one state so far, and it happens to be his home state. But no matter, he’s certainly treating it as a victory speech, making a triumphal, rambling address in which he—surprise!—is raging against the media and the elite, which has apparently tried and failed to stop him. I think it’s an odd speech to be making, considering that his campaign is totally stalled right now, but I’m part of the elite media, so you probably shouldn’t believe me about that anyway.

8:37 P.M. E.T.: The networks have just called Tennessee for Rick Santorum. It’s a big win for him.

8:33 P.M. E.T.: While we’re all waiting for some actual news, the big thing among political types just now was that C.N.N. put a camera at a polling place in Wasilla, Alaska, in the hope of capturing Sarah Palin as she voted. And they succeeded: in fact, they got an interview out of her. She didn’t make any real news with what she said (she left open the possibility that she wouldn’t turn down a draft campaign if it got to that point at the Republican National Convention, but that doesn’t really mean anything); the important thing was that she gave an interview to C.N.N., even though she’s a paid contributor to Fox News. There’s been some tension between Palin and Fox before; she didn’t give the exclusive on her announcement that she wouldn’t run for President to the network, and that decision is said to have angered Roger Ailes.

8:07 P.M. E.T.: While we’re waiting for a call from Tennessee, be sure to read Chloe Fox’s piece about the race in the state from earlier today.

8 P.M. E.T.: More poll closings just now: Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Massachusetts is of course the state where Romney was governor; the networks have, no surprise, already called it for him. CNN’s holding off on a call in conservative bastion Oklahoma, but Fox News has declared Santorum the winner there. So far, no word on a winner in Tennessee, which is, along with Ohio, one of the most important states tonight.

7:42 P.M. E.T.: Our own Ryan Lizza wrote earlier about how important the evangelical vote for Romney will be tonight and going forward. Looking at the exit polls just now, he says “Romney’s perfect record of losing evangelical vote continues in Ohio.”

7:37 P.M. E.T.: CNN just called Vermont for Romney. This isn’t terribly surprising; nor is it one of the night’s big prizes. But hey, it’s a win. And in a close race like this one, every delegate counts.

7:30 P.M. E.T.: Polls are closed in Ohio, but so far, the networks aren’t declaring a winner. The exit polls show Romney leading Santorum by a few points, and the conventional wisdom is that that’s how it’ll end up, but it could be close.

7:20 P.M. E.T.: CNN has now officially called Virginia for Mitt Romney, confirming what we basically already knew. The question there now is whether he can get all of the state’s delegates, or whether Ron Paul will take a few away.

7:10 P.M. E.T.: We’re still waiting for calls in Vermont and Virginia. In Virginia, at least, that’s not because the outcome is in any doubt—Mitt Romney’s going to win in a landslide—but because the networks didn’t bother with exit polls, since only Romney and Ron Paul were on the ballot.

So actually, what we’re really waiting for right now is for the clock to hit 7:30 E.T. That’s when the polls in Ohio close. Depending on how things shake out, Ohio might end up being the most important state tonight; certainly it’s been the focus of the battle between Romney and Rick Santorum over the past week.

7 P.M. E.T.: Polls have just closed in Georgia, Vermont, and Virginia. As soon as that happened, the networks called Georgia for hometown boy Newt Gingrich. It’s a big prize for him, even though it was expected. No calls on Vermont and Virginia yet, but remember: in Virginia, it’s between only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Gingrich and Rick Santorum failed to qualify for the ballot.

Top: Photograph by AP Photo/Stephan Savoia.

Bottom: Photograph by AP Photo/Eric Gay.

Alex Koppelman was a politics editor for newyorker.com from from 2011 to 2013.